the french and poor military strategy

[Spears]

what they should have done is nationalize all assets of all elderly people when the countdown started (yes this is fascism,) then use that land and resources to subsidize population growth as well as outfit expeditions and over the next few decades with people who are between 35-65. these expeditions should have focused on recon and logistic support for future generations. At the same time there should have been mandates for having as many children as possible. those who refused or couldnt should have been pressed into an expedition.
by the time the game starts is when they should have been sending full on combat expeditions with military aged youth 18-35, with decades worth of foundational infrastructure paving the way for them--rather than it just being a lost cause as stated by Gustav's sister in the prologue

[Meewec]

unless expedition zero was never sent, which i doubt any government would just ignore a threat completely, none of your grand strategy here would have mattered.

[Ratsplat]

Judging by the Battleground zone, it didn't appear that even thousands, tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) could put a dent into anything. It took luck, plot armor, and the lumina converter before anything could be done (though apparently one other expedition got pretty close...)

Not to mention spoilers helped 33.

[Spears]

Originally posted by Meewec:

unless expedition zero was never sent, which i doubt any government would just ignore a threat completely, none of your grand strategy here would have mattered.

well thank god no one put as much thought into this on their writing team as I just did

[Jotun]

Originally posted by Ratsplat:

Judging by the Battleground zone, it didn't appear that even thousands, tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) could put a dent into anything. It took luck, plot armor, and the lumina converter before anything could be done (though apparently one other expedition got pretty close...)

Not to mention spoilers helped 33.

And then there are the real chads, Expedition 60!

[Kapika96]

A lot of that simply doesn't work.

"subsidize population growth" "mandates for having as many children as possible"
Not possible. The people of Lumiere were painted by the paintress. She has no way to replenish her chroma hence why her older creations are being deleted year by year. That means her ability to create new life is also dwindling. People in Lumiere can't choose to have more/less children, it's not really up to them.

There isn't much in the way of land/resources. This is part of a city that was suddenly, and violently, cast out into the ocean as an island. The amount of usable land they have and the resources within it are severely limited. Additionally the early expeditions were search and rescue expeditions. They weren't suicide missions aimed at taking down the paintress. The people on them were meant to return to Lumiere. There were still few if any survivors from those though. That shows that extracting resources from outside Lumiere was basically impossible (most life outside Lumiere was specifically designed to kill them so that makes sense).

A bunch of the expeditions already were focused on recon/logistics. eg. the climbers expedition that was all about setting up infrastructure to help climb mountains etc. for future expeditions.

You also need people to actually believe in your ideas for that kind of organisation to work too. So you'd need a person able to convince the populace that all of that would be worthwhile and would work. Ironic considering they'd be wrong about everything and would have 0% chance of success, quite the opposite in fact with a successful expedition actually dooming Lumiere rather than saving it. They'd also need to be young to avoid being gommaged. And be a coward (but somehow not lose public support due to their cowardice) so that they don't go on an expedition themselves and die.

Do you really think such a tyrannical regime could survive 60+ years? With no outside support, very little in the way of resources to prop up their regime, zero success against their enemies, and an increasingly apathetic populace. Not to mention France has a history of overthrowing tyrants.

It'd simply be impossible. Anybody with ideas such as yours likely would've lead from the front as a passionate expeditioner (and died), or been ignored by the populace and considered crazy.